Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas gathered top Republican candidates around him over the summer for a photo portrait in a display of party unity following a bruising primary. There was Ken Paxton, running for U.S. Senate, and Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor.
And there, smiling over Mr. Abbott’s right shoulder, was Bo French.
At the time, few outside Texas politics were familiar with Mr. French, a candidate for a statewide office regulating oil and gas who has a history of unvarnished bigotry.
But over the weekend he rocketed to national attention — almost all of it negative — after posting racist attacks on University of Texas students as they enjoyed a moment of pure elation at their football team’s improbable comeback victory. In one post, Mr. French described South Asian students at the school as “foreigners” who had “displaced” Americans at the state’s flagship university.
Mr. French’s posts struck a chord in a way his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim comments have not before. The messages threatened to fracture the Texas Republicans’ attempts at solidarity and tested their willingness to criticize one of their own — just weeks before midterm voting begins. Mr. French denied his posts were racist and threw the blame back on Republicans who didn’t fully support his message.
The posts have also given Democrats renewed hope to win a statewide office in Texas for the first time in a generation. While much of the national focus has been on the U.S. Senate race against Mr. Paxton, the scandal-plagued attorney general running against James Talarico, state party officials believe Mr. French and another anti-immigrant hard-liner, Don Huffines, are particularly vulnerable. The hard-liners on the Republican slate may help Democrats in other races as well.
“There are certainly Republican candidates this cycle that are so outside of the mainstream that it provides opportunities for us,” said Kendall Scudder, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. A year ago, he added, those opportunities “may not have seemed possible.”
Recent polls show Mr. French with a slim lead over his Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal. Republicans had rallied around Mr. French, even if, like Mr. Abbott, they did not support him in the primary.
Last week, Mr. French projected confidence as he walked around President Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas.
“We are working together, all of us are working together to make sure we win,” he told The New York Times on Friday. When asked about Democrats believing he was an easy target, Mr. French said, “Let them think that.”
Then came his posts Sunday morning that drew condemnation from some of the party’s top elected officials and candidates running for office. But not all of them.
The speaker of the Texas House, Dustin Burrows, called on Mr. French to delete Sunday’s post. Senator John Cornyn, who lost in the primary to Mr. Paxton, urged Republicans to condemn Mr. French’s “intolerance and racism.” And Karl Rove, the former senior adviser to George W. Bush, is reported to have said he would vote for a Democrat for the first time in decades because of the incident.
Mr. Abbott chastised Mr. French for his divisive rhetoric while, in the same statement, saying he supported Texans having “the toughest immigration laws of any state in America.”
By contrast, Mr. Patrick, who had previously called for Mr. French’s resignation, said nothing about the post and did not comment.
Nate Sheets, who is running for agriculture commissioner, said in an interview with The Times that the proliferation of mosques and Hindu temples in Texas was “frustrating people,” and he criticized immigrant communities he said were not assimilating.
“He pointed out that a bunch of those students were Indian kids,” Mr. Sheets said, referring to Mr. French. “How he articulated that — no, I didn’t like that. Do I agree with the sentiment that the immigration system that we have in America today is creating a negative future for America? I do. I do agree with that.”
The split reaction to Mr. French’s posts gave him room to double down.
“Some of the less conservative people in Texas are the ones attacking me,” Mr. French said in a radio interview on Monday.
It was not the first time Republicans have criticized Mr. French for his social media posts.
Last summer, he received blowback after posting a poll on social media asking whether Jews or Muslims posed the bigger threat to America. He deleted the post, which he insisted was not antisemitic, and refused calls to resign as head of the Republican Party in Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth.
In November, Mr. French said he would run for the state’s influential three-member oil and gas regulatory board, the Texas Railroad Commission.
Mr. Abbott, Mr. Patrick and Mr. Burrows all backed Mr. French’s opponent in the Republican primary runoff, Jim Wright, the incumbent commissioner. Despite their opposition, Mr. French won. His victory did little to temper his combative social media presence.
In the past year, he has called people who believe in transgender rights or birthright citizenship “retards.” He described Native Americans as “third world savages, who were conquered.” He said he wanted to “denaturalize and deport” all Muslims in the United States.
Top Republicans in Texas did not respond to those posts as they did to the one attacking the University of Texas students.
Aside from Mr. French, another vulnerable down-ballot candidate is Mr. Huffines, who once challenged Mr. Abbott from the right.
Mr. Huffines, who Mr. Abbott appointed to the role of comptroller after the primary, did not comment on Mr. French’s weekend post. Sarah Eckhardt, the Democrat in the race, said Mr. Huffines’s silence amounted to tacit approval.
“I have watched how this party has become more and more hard-line,” said Ms. Eckhardt, a state senator and former prosecutor. Mr. Huffines did not respond to request for comment.
Mr. Rosenthal said he knew he was in for a tough fight against Mr. French. A Democrat has not won a statewide race in Texas in more than 30 years.
“The odds are still against me,” Mr. Rosenthal said. He said he had received dozens of death threats from Mr. French’s supporters, some attacking him for being Jewish.
When asked about the antisemitism directed at his opponent, Mr. French told The Times at last week’s convention that Mr. Rosenthal was “not practicing Jewish.”
Mr. Rosenthal pushed back.
“Anyone that thinks it’s their job to pass judgment on whether I’m Jewish or not can shove it,” he said.
For his part, Mr. French has acted as though the bipartisan scorn his post elicited actually amounted to a win for him. On Monday evening, he thanked the “patriots” who just helped him cross 100,000 followers on X.
Then, he posted that his opponent was “radical.”
